Why do people turn off their brains, and close their eyes, as soon as they turn on their GPS?

This year i did my first drives ever with a SatNav (no codriver, unknown area, unknown alphabet on the road signs), and yes, those things can be very usefull, but if that thing tells me "Do a u-turn" i first have a look if that is actually feasible. Or i actually try to look at the road it tells me to go to first. That avoided quite a few "going down a one way street the wrong direction" mishaps, that also seem to be way to common.

Oh i had quite a few fun conversations with the lady under the windshield … "Take the next road to the left!" "No, i wont, that does not look like a road at all!" "You missed your road, turn around!" "no, i wont! Have a look out of the window, that path leads nowhere." "You missed your road, turn around!" "no, fuck you! I am driving how i feel i should, if you want it or not!" "recalculating" "finally you realized you where wrong!"

I both love and hate them for backpacking. Love them, because it gives me good feedback of my distance to destination. Hate them, because I get sucked into this gear-head techno-geekery that makes me ignore everything I know about orienteering.

My rule of thumb is to completely ignore what my in-car GPS says if it wants me to leave a paved road. If I don't know how to get there once I leave the paved road, I'll pull out a damn map, because at least those will indicate if its a maintained road.

Did you hear about the lady down Kingston way who drove into a swamp because her GPS told her too?? Kingston Fire found her standing on top of a half submerged car about 4 hours later becasuse she didn't know where she was.

Then there was the dirty great semi trailer that bulldozed up a huge mound of dirt in front of his bullbar when he tried to follow a shortcut recommended by his GPS. My brother and his policeman mate were out riding in the state forest near my town. They came around the corner on this small dirt track to be confronted by this bizarre scene.

The truck had a HIAB crane on the back and the trucky had tried to pull himself through the bog with it. He'd destroyed every tree within reach. He pleaded with the cop not to tell his boss. There was no way that he was getting outta there without telling his boss. I'd have loved to have heard how he had gotten out of there. It would have been a major recovery operation.

Warning: For use in vehicles, it is the sole responsibility of the driver of the vehicle to operate the vehicle in a safe manner, maintain full surveillance of all driving conditions at all times, and not become distracted by the eTrex Summit to the exclusion of safe driving practices...

On page ix (that's 4 pages before page one):

garmin wrote:

Note: You should always be prepared and capable of navigating without the eTrex Summit...

and the page has a picture of the gps along with a map and a compass.

But the eTrex is a hand-held unit with no terrain map feature. This encourages you to carry a real map and compass, and actually use them.